Small Town Inertia: portraits of a nation in need

Jim Mortram started photographing the residents of his home town of Dereham, Norfolk, more or less by accident. But his results lift the lid on life in an isolated community – and add up to an unsettling snapshot of Britain today

The People's clinic: Citizens feeding citizens
Recent years have seen a dramatic rise in homelessness, with food banks use tripling in 12 months, and the bedroom tax and changes to the benefits system all conspiring to make life harder for many people. Karen, herself on health-related benefits, created The Peoples’ Picnic to distribute donated food to the homeless and needy. Here Karen's daughter Josie helps prepare sandwiches

Simon and Kirsty: a Prison Without Walls
'The benefits people always fob us off, every week they say: "You can't expect us to give you money straight away," and yeah, that's alright but you don't know how we have to live, what state we have to live in, and you're there going home to your nice food, to your brand-new car, a seven-bedroom house and we're left here, and no one has a care in the world'

David at home, December 2012
David, who lost his sight after a cycling accident: ‘In dreams I can still see. I wake and feel I can still see, then the black seeps in. Now being awake is like the dream’

Helena: Every day is a morning after
Helena, at home, the day after a mixup at the hospital abortion clinic, June 2013. She says: 'I can't win either way because my therapist and my doctor have said that if I were to keep the baby, it would be taken into care right away'

Jimmy: Tales of escape, endurance and infinite moments
‘I used to thieve turnips out of the fields and rob the orchards because I was hungry. I had nothing else. Never had a Christmas, never knew what a Christmas was’